


Mike Stamford Knows

by EuterpesChild



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Eventual relationship, First Meeting, Freeform, Gen, Implied Stalking/Foreknowledge, M/M, Magical Realism, Mike Stamford-centric
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-10-25
Updated: 2016-10-25
Packaged: 2018-08-24 13:20:45
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 436
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8373721
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/EuterpesChild/pseuds/EuterpesChild
Summary: Contrary to popular opinion, Mike Stamford knows John Watson.Knows him in the way your vaguely-absentee father knows you, or your psychologist knows you, or the long-suffering bartender at your Friday-night haunt knows you, perhaps, but he knows John Watson.So when Mike Stamford meets John Watson that fateful day in Russell Square, maybe it's not an accident.





	

Contrary to popular opinion, Mike Stamford knows John Watson.

 

Knows him in the way your vaguely-absentee father knows you, or your psychologist knows you, or the long-suffering bartender at your Friday-night haunt knows you, perhaps, but he knows John Watson.

 

Mike knows about the co-ed in anatomy freshman year the same way he knows about Albert Morris in the first year of their residency. Mike knows about Jeanie and Louie and Marissa and Robert, and Mike knows more than John thinks he does about James Sholto.

 

Most importantly, though, Mike Stamford knows about Sherlock Holmes.

 

When Mike discovered the reclusive genius in the morgue of Bart’s, it’s less a sense of disgust (though it is a bit of that too) and more a sense of inevitability that Sherlock exists. It’s expected that Sherlock Holmes exists in the same sphere as Mike Stamford, because Mike Stamford knows John Watson.

 

John thinks he hides his sexuality well. And maybe he does. Maybe to the women John picks up at the bar and in the grocery store and in his university lectures and around basic training, John Watson is an upstanding heterosexual male in the proud British army tradition (Queen and country and all that). And maybe to the occasional man in John’s young adult life, John Watson is a mostly-straight man who’s pleasant to look at and fairly enthusiastic about male-on-male experiences.

 

But then Sherlock Holmes exists, and John Hamish Watson is the man he’s always been.

 

Mike Stamford is easy to overlook, easy to forget. He knows this, and while he’s no Sherlock Holmes, or even a John Watson, he uses that fact to learn things. Mike Stamford knows who James Sholto is, and Mike Stamford knows who James Sholto is to John Watson, Mike Stamford knows when they meet and when they separate, and Mike Stamford knows that a box of Toblerone and dime true-crime novels sent from a nondescript London address would help make pain more bearable if not assuage it entirely.

 

Mike Stamford knows John Watson, and so it’s no accident that he meets John Watson in Russell Square and brings him to meet Sherlock Holmes. It’s no accident that Sherlock Holmes can read John Watson, because even though he’s never mentioned him, Mike Stamford knows Sherlock Holmes and that he is made for John Watson the same way John Watson is made for Sherlock Holmes.

 

And if eventually Mike Stamford will get an invitation to the wedding of William Sherlock Scott Holmes and John Hamish Watson, even if the two relevant parties don’t realize it yet, let’s just say this:

 

Mike Stamford knows.

**Author's Note:**

> A tiny idea that wouldn't stop bothering me.  
> What if Mike Stamford is either slightly telepathic or has contacts keeping an eye on John? What if he knows that John and Sherlock belong together, not just as flatmates?
> 
> Mike Stamford deserves more love.


End file.
